The Craft of Writing

A Love Sonnet by Ian Harry Wells

Infatuation

Aged over seventy and I fell in love, unexpected to say the least. I will never forget the date; 31st October 2014, Halloween! Is that prophetic? More than twelve months have since passed and those feelings haven’t waned, they have intensified. How to celebrate this situation? After some thinking I came up with the following … I like to write, the language of love is poetry, the best love poems are sonnets, therefore I decided to attempt to create a love sonnet. What follows is the outcome of that decision, written for my princess.

Infatuation

You are more precious than any gem to me,
Your smile shines brightly like the stars above,
Yet you quite outshine them as all can see.
You cause my heart to flutter from purest love,
I know I’ll be your slave all my days, uncaring,
When I’m with you my spirits uplift ecstatically.
We’ll romp in the sea together, do silly things, sharing,
We’ll sprinkle stardust with every splash, magically.
As when in my teens, (my first love I still revere),
Deliciously happy am I again, bewitched, truly sincere,
I’ve no shame or guilt, I have no regrets to condemn,
Unconditional love I feel, my pure love is your diadem.
We will hold hands, laugh, have fun and be beguiled,
A special bond I share with you, my sweet grandchild.

Ian Wells and I attended ArmidaleTeachers College in the class of 1961-62 where we studied how to inspire young people to learn their lessons. Our paths have met again, this time through our love of writing. Ian lives with his family on the Central Coast of NSW

A Love Sonnet by Ian Harry Wells was last modified: June 20th, 2018 by Anne Skyvington

9 comments

Ian WellsJanuary 9, 2016 at 10:00 pm

Anne,

It should be known that twice I sent you working copies of this sonnet when it was ‘under construction’ and twice you gave great advice and critical support. I very much appreciate your efforts as I do the invitation again to be a guest contributor to your blog.

Hi Ian
I think with poetry one needs someone to bounce ideas off. I think the final version was simpler, and therefore better. Yet I still had doubts that I might be wrong, and I’m glad you stuck to your guns about some things. Your ability to express sincere emotions in poetic form is obvious. Keep it up. Your family must be so proud of these lovely emotions.

Ian Harry Wells was another colleague of mine at Armidale Teachers’ College in the 60s. He wrote the post “A Love Sonnet” as a guest and I posted it on my blog. But our experiences and our more recent families are very similar, it seems. Our grandchildren are precious to both of us, like rare jewels.

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Anne Skyvington

Anne Skyvington is a writer based in Sydney who has been practising and teaching creative writing skills for many years. Learn about structuring a short story and how to go about creating a longer work, such as a novel or a memoir.